IT Personas

Owned by Gary Thompson
Last updated: Nov 15, 2006Version comment
3 min read

The primary form of the IT persona is the IT decision maker of a university, college, or trade school.

Main characteristics

  • 30-45 years of age
  • Most likely Digital Immigrants - they have migrated to technology
  • Have experience and are comfortable with most technology and likely understand how it works
  • Phone, email, and written document are primary forms of communication
  • Spend a significant amount of time in the IT environment, specialized to academia
  • Are concerned about the intstitution's IT needs and goals and how that affects their jobs
  • Are not (usually) concerned with the teaching/learning or research aspects of the institution


Craig CTO


Craig represents the IT director and decision-maker of an institution. Craig has a background in technology and a career - both inside and outisde of the university - in hardware, software, and networking. As CTO, Craig works out of the Office of the President to develop a long range technology plan for the university. He is charged with identifying ways to apply new technologies to improve the university's academic, administrative and research environments. Craig knows technology, and is concerned with selecting the right technology and the costs of developing, deploying, maintaining, and supporting technology at the campus.


Pauline Portaladministrator


Pauline represents the Web property representative or champion of the university. Pauline is not a technical person primarily, and may not even belong to the IT department. Pauline is charged with best representing the university - its brand, campuses, and constituencies - in the portal solution. Pauline is a user of the portal in the role of administrator. Pauline is concerned with the production portal, its branding, configuration, content, security, patches and upgrades, documentation, and error/issue resolution.


Mark Manager


Mark represents the project managers of the IT department. Mark is not himself a technical person, but manages a team of technical people to implement technology solutions for the university. One of Mark's projects is the university portal project, and he juggles the management of that project with the mangagement of several other projects. Mark desires quality documentation, clean process, and reassurance and confidence in the technology.


Steven Systemadministrator


Steven represents the system administrators of the IT department. Among many other sysadmin tasks, Steven is tasked with keeping the portal machine up and running. Steven is responsible for and presides over the portal environment, but otherwise has little concern about or involvement in the portal application or project.


Daniel Developer


Daniel represents the software developer in a university IT department. Daniel graduated from the university's computer science program and applied for a job in the IT department. As a software developer, Daniel reports to a manger in the IT department and is tasked with implementing, customizing, maintaining, and fixing the university's technology solutions. Daniel primarily works on a single project and knows some of the system's nuts and bolts. Daniel selectively embraces technology based on personal bias and philosophy.


Tara Techsupport


Tara represents the university helpdesk or technical support representative. Tara is a student attending the university who also works part-time in the IT department as technical support. Tara's job is to answer support emails and phone calls by university users of their student portal. While Tara does not understand the underlying technology of the portal, she is a power-user because of her knowledge of how to operate, customize, and troubleshoot the portal. Much of her knowledge is provided by the technical support knowledgebase, a database/faq/answer repository made available to technical support personnel.


PERSONAS

What is a persona?

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